Breathe Carolina - 04/15/14

You’re just wrapping up your headliner. You had MOD SUN out for awhile, and now you have Jonny Craig. How’s that been going for you guys?

It’s been great, it’s our first headliner in a long time. Going into it we weren’t sure what to think or how it was going to be, obviously with everything that’s changed, we were kind of worried about it. But it’s actually been the biggest headlining shows that we’ve ever done, so it’s actually been a nice surprise for us.

It was your birthday recently! How’d you celebrate it?

Well, we were in Grand Rapids so there wasn’t too much to do, and it was super cold outside, so we ended up going to this bar. Jonny and I actually have the same birthday, so we just were drinking and hanging.

Were you guys offered any other tours other than doing a headliner?

For right now, no. But it was nice for us, since we were direct support for the We The Kings tour last summer and then the Sleeping with Sirens tour. We were supposed to do a headliner once the album was out, but there was some confusion with our agent and our old manager, so we ended up touring before it was out. But it was cool though because we built a lot of hype around the album that we could share on stage.

Were you possibly looking at holding off anyways until the album came out, and then looking for more of a radio-friendly tour?

It just depends, you know what I mean? We’re kind of just being picky in a sense right now about what we want to do. It just depends on who it was.

You guys are playing a large chunk of the album on this tour. Last time I checked, it was: “Collide”, “Bury Me”, “Savages”, “Sellouts”, and “Mistakes”. Why those particular songs?

I just think “Collide” has a lot of live energy, it’s pretty much like a straight EDM song, it goes off super hard. “Sellouts” got such a good response when we put it out and we wanted to do that live; we didn’t do it for the first half of the tour. “Savages” because it was the first song we put out. “Mistakes” is actually our encore song.

Let’s focus on “Mistakes” for a second. Do you feel like that song is one of the best representations of what your band is all about?

Yeah, we’re getting a lot more into the EDM world, so I think that was one of the first songs that we did that intro’ed into it, a classic build-up into a drop. We just naturally went that direction on a lot of these songs.

Even lyrically though, what that song talks about…

Yeah, it’s one of those songs where it’s like “Hey, everyone fucks up but it’s all good, you can’t be too hard on yourself, you can’t judge yourself too hard.”

What are your thoughts on being back on Fearless as opposed to a major label?

It’s way better. We had a lot of problems being on a major label, their idea of what we were was nothing close to ours, and so eventually we just had to part ways. Fearless is just more in tune and focused – we don’t have to compete with Adele, Jay-Z, you know what I mean? We get a lot more attention and a lot more love from that angle.

When you were on Columbia, you earned a gold record for “Blackout”. Are you guys still focused on being on the radio?

Yes and no. “Blackout” was kind of what it was, and we didn’t write that song for the radio, that was the first song we wrote for the album in a day and a half, and it kind of just ended up being that song. Fearless worked it the most, and when Columbia took over, they didn’t do too much – it ended up going double platinum, the song did crazy well.

For us, if it happens again, awesome. If it doesn’t, it’s not “make or break” for us in any sense, because we didn’t come from that world, and we like to make real music, we don’t want to do stuff that’s written for us. There was a lot of stuff with Columbia, where they’d send us songs that were already written that they wanted us to do, and we were like “We just don’t want to do that.” We already naturally write poppy songs to begin with, so to go that way is a little too much.

When you went into the writing process for this album, what sort of goals did you have?

It was a struggle at first, we didn’t know what we wanted to do. Everything we’d write was cool, but it didn’t feel like it was right for some reason. I think once we finally figured it out and realized that we wanted to make these really intense EDM dance songs, everything started coming a lot easier.

Did you have any particular experience or moment when you realized you wanted to go in that direction?

I dunno, I think it’s been the natural progression of our band. We do a lot of DJ sets too, which is cool because we’re headlining the biggest nightclubs in Las Vegas and stuff like that. Being able to do that and seeing how happy everyone is, you know what I mean? It’s just a really cool environment, and I think it inspired us to say “We want to do this.”

I wanted to jump into a few of the tracks off the album. “Bang It Out” is easily the most accessible, since it’s more of a “radio” track. How did Karmin become a part of that song?

Well, we had written a part for a girl and we had our friend that was signed to our producer’s manager side-label sing it, and we thought “This is cool”. We’ve been friends with Karmin before, we’ve known them for a long time. She was actually in LA, and we thought “Why not ask her to do this part”, and I called her and she said “Alright, cool, I’ll be right in there”. She just came in, did the part, and we shot a video with her.

In that song, there’s a line in a foreign language. What is that line?

It says “Come closer” or something like that. Our guitar player’s girlfriend is French, and when we were recording, we were like “Let’s do a funny part here…something like ‘Hey sexy’ or something”. We actually wrote half the song a long time ago, so we recorded that part like a year and a half ago.

Next, Danny Worsnop from Asking Alexandria hopped on “Sellouts”. How’d he become involved?

And that’s another thing, we all grew up playing in heavier bands and playing guitar. I’ve been playing my entire life, so we at least have a few guitar driven tracks on our album. It’s not something that I think we did on purpose, but making sure we’re sticking to a couple key elements as to what BC has been about.

I had written the whole song and everything was done, but there were two open parts, and I texted Danny and said “I got this song you’d be perfect on – here’s the content, here’s the lyrics. If you want to come in and do it, let me know.” And he came in, and he already had lyrics written, so we’re like “Go into the booth and do your part” and he did the screaming parts, so we shoved that bridge together and then it just became the song.

Looking at “Savages”, I noticed that Kyle has writing credits.

We had written a hook with him, and after his departure we wrote the rest of the song around it. We didn’t want to dig him and not give him credit for something that he was a part of, we just wanted to be fair.

Did you entertain the idea of having him sending a vocal part across?

I think it was one of those things where he was just ready to be done with this whole thing, so there was more of a thing where we went our separate ways completely and good luck.

Do you talk to him very often?

No.

Lastly, “Chasing Hearts” has Tyler Carter from Issues on it. Did his involvement come directly from the time you spent together on the Sleeping With Sirens tour?

He and I had always talked about doing a song together, but on that tour we just became close friends, so we flew him out to LA and we wrote that song, and I turned out to be super cool. We were like “What can we do that will be different, that can showcase his R&B style vocals?” So we thought “Let’s come up with a Drake meets Postal Service” type of thing.

Now was there anyone that you really wanted to be part of the record that just wasn’t able to make it?

Yeah, I had talked to Kellin a bunch. We actually had his flight booked, but then he had to do something with Sirens last minute. But that’s how it is in this world, shit pops up randomly that you can’t really control.

Are there any other songs on the album that you would consider your overall favorite?

You know, I really enjoy the opening track, “Bury Me”, which was a song that we had made the music for awhile ago and it always stuck around. When we made the music, I was humming this melody and it was the first thing that came to my mind, and it was stuck in all of our heads. We decided that if it stuck out that much to all of us, we needed to write something around it. So we wrote something around the melody, and it fit perfectly and it was just cool to see it all come together, because sometimes you’ll have a melody in your head and you think it’s going to be awesome, but then you sing it and it sucks. So for this track to work out was awesome for us.

What would you say to fans that are apprehensive about whether or not the band can continue without Kyle?

Give the record a listen, and come see us live.

You’re doing main-stage again this summer on Warped Tour. Was there any sort of hesitation towards confirming for the tour, since you’ve done it a few times in the past?

No, for us it’s understanding that there are kids that are concerned about what’s going on, and when we got the offer we thought that this was a good chance to show our core fans that everything is still the same. On this tour we haven’t been asked once and the shows have been crazier than ever. Even if they’re concerned, they’re trying to see what it’s all about and I think once they see, they’ll say “Cool, this is not different.”

Do you feel like Warped Tour is where you guys feel at home?

Yes and no. Like I said before, we’ve been DJ-ing a lot and we’ve been getting a really good response with the EDM world, but we don’t want to forget where we came from, where we started.

With the whole EDM direction you’re going in, are there any songs from the album that are going to be remixed or anything?

Yeah, there’s a couple of remixes right now that we’re waiting on, and we’re going to do a bunch more for the album as well.

Can you mention who may be involved with this? Maybe Big Chocolate or Scout?

We’re going to be working with The Jane Doze, Gazzo, and a couple other ones that we’re talking to. We’re pumped, it’s gonna be dope.

What would you say is your biggest goal for this upcoming album cycle?

I think to just do everything that we can. I want to get us more into the EDM world, and I won’t our old fans to say “Alright, this is still awesome” and I want to the new fans to be like “This is a brand new band that I haven’t heard of before”, and I think we have a lot of that going on right now and that’s really cool. We have a lot people who are just seeing us for the first time, who treat the other members of the band the same way they treat me.

I think the support that we’ve gotten from everyone in our scene to a lot of other social sites is really awesome, because there’s been skepticism.

I was a little worried about how the band would sound after Kyle left. It's sad that he and David don't even talk before since they were in a band together for almost eight years. I can't even imagine. I hope he didn't leave on bad terms. I've heard Chasing Hearts and Sellouts and now I'm excited to buy Savages. I'm sad I missed them when they were in Grand Rapids, but I'm excited to see them at warped tour! Here's hoping they'll playing Chasing Hearts with Tyler.